Disappearance of wildflowers may have doomed Ice Age giants
The belief that woolly mammoths and the woolly rhinoceros were hunted to oblivion was not the human's fault but cause of a plant known as forbs - essentially wildflowers. Humans may have hunted the woolly mammoths but it was mainly the lack of the wildflowers that have made them gone extinct. Scientists who studied DNA preserved in Arctic permafrost sediments and in the remains of such ancient animals have concluded that these Ice Age beasts relied heavily on the protein-rich wildflowers that once blanketed the region. As the Ice Age did not last forever as such the ice began to melt over a very long period of time. Dramatic Ice Age climate change caused a huge decline in these plants, leaving the Arctic covered instead in grasses and shrubs that lacked the same nutritional value and could not sustain the big herbivorous mammals, the scientists reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.The change in vegetation began roughly 25,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago - a time when many of the big animals slipped into extinction, the researchers said.
Scientists for years have been trying to figure out what caused this mass extinction, when two-thirds of all the large-bodied mammals in the Northern Hemisphere died out."Now we have, from my perspective at least, a very credible explanation," Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, an expert in ancient DNA who led an international team of researchers, said in a telephone interview. In order to find out the truth scientist have carried out a 50,000-year history of the vegetation across the Arctic in Siberia and North America. They even obtained 242 permafrost sediment samples from various Arctic sites and studied the feces and stomach contents from the mummified remains of Ice Age animals recovered in places like Siberia. They determined the age of the samples and analyzed the DNA.
Handout of a mammoth tusk extracted from ice complex deposits along the Logata River in Taimyr, Russia
A Mammoth tusk extracted from ice complex deposits along the Logata River in Taimyr.
The woolly mammoths and the woolly rhinoceros may have been the Ice Age giants back then but they are dependent on just a small wildflower on survival so without the wildflower they will not be able to survive much longer as the grasses and shrubs do not provide the same nutritional value a wildflower can to them.While many scientists had thought the ecosystem had been grasslands and the big animals were grass eaters, this study showed it instead was dominated by a kind of plant known as forbs - essentially wildflowers.
"The whole Arctic ecosystem looked extremely different from today. You can imagine these enormous steppes with no trees, no shrubs, but dominated by these small flowering plants," Willerslev said. Christian Brochmann, a botanist at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo, said the permafrost contained "a vast, frozen DNA archive left as footprints from past ecosystems," that could be deciphered by exploring animal and plant collections already stored in museums.
Therefore we may have the wrong idea about how these giants went extinct but now we have a clearer idea of how they might have gone extinct. These may also be the reason for why many more other dinosaurs have gone extinct too.
Disappearance of wildflowers may have doomed Ice Age giants
The belief that woolly mammoths and the woolly rhinoceros were hunted to oblivion was not the human's fault but cause of a plant known as forbs - essentially wildflowers. Humans may have hunted the woolly mammoths but it was mainly the lack of the wildflowers that have made them gone extinct. Scientists who studied DNA preserved in Arctic permafrost sediments and in the remains of such ancient animals have concluded that these Ice Age beasts relied heavily on the protein-rich wildflowers that once blanketed the region. As the Ice Age did not last forever as such the ice began to melt over a very long period of time. Dramatic Ice Age climate change caused a huge decline in these plants, leaving the Arctic covered instead in grasses and shrubs that lacked the same nutritional value and could not sustain the big herbivorous mammals, the scientists reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.The change in vegetation began roughly 25,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago - a time when many of the big animals slipped into extinction, the researchers said.
Scientists for years have been trying to figure out what caused this mass extinction, when two-thirds of all the large-bodied mammals in the Northern Hemisphere died out."Now we have, from my perspective at least, a very credible explanation," Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, an expert in ancient DNA who led an international team of researchers, said in a telephone interview. In order to find out the truth scientist have carried out a 50,000-year history of the vegetation across the Arctic in Siberia and North America. They even obtained 242 permafrost sediment samples from various Arctic sites and studied the feces and stomach contents from the mummified remains of Ice Age animals recovered in places like Siberia. They determined the age of the samples and analyzed the DNA.
A Mammoth tusk extracted from ice complex deposits along the Logata River in Taimyr.
The woolly mammoths and the woolly rhinoceros may have been the Ice Age giants back then but they are dependent on just a small wildflower on survival so without the wildflower they will not be able to survive much longer as the grasses and shrubs do not provide the same nutritional value a wildflower can to them.While many scientists had thought the ecosystem had been grasslands and the big animals were grass eaters, this study showed it instead was dominated by a kind of plant known as forbs - essentially wildflowers.
"The whole Arctic ecosystem looked extremely different from today. You can imagine these enormous steppes with no trees, no shrubs, but dominated by these small flowering plants," Willerslev said. Christian Brochmann, a botanist at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo, said the permafrost contained "a vast, frozen DNA archive left as footprints from past ecosystems," that could be deciphered by exploring animal and plant collections already stored in museums.
Therefore we may have the wrong idea about how these giants went extinct but now we have a clearer idea of how they might have gone extinct. These may also be the reason for why many more other dinosaurs have gone extinct too.
Found article from Yahoo news.